A MIDLAND couple have fulfilled a 2½-year “labour of love” by building a fully functional miniature chapel in their back garden.

Jon and Muriel Richards spent around £25,000 assembling the sanctuary next to their house in the Warwickshire village of Mappleborough Green, near Studley, from pieces they collected from reclamation yards across the country.

The altar and pews had to be chiselled down to size, and the stained-glass windows specially cut.

Now the building, named The Chapel of the Crosses by the local vicar, can accommodate 12 people.

And Mr Richards, a retired watch-importer, said the result was “wonderful”.

He said: “It is about 8 feet by 12 feet – about the size of a garden shed.

“It is very private – it’s part of our home. But it is certainly a wonderful place inside; it’s a very emotional place.”

Mr Richards said everything, including the chapel’s centrepiece, a bronze crucifixion figure about 3ft 6in high, has “in its previous life” been in a church or a chapel and was collected over a period of about 2½ years.

He said the building has not been consecrated, but the local vicar has given services.

Mr Richards said: “The question everyone asks me is, ‘Why?’

“I’d like to say I experienced some divine intervention but that’s not true. My wife is very involved with the church and is in the choir and that’s how it started out.

“If you look at the time we spent running up and down the country, going to reclamation yards for all the artefacts, the materials, it is a lot of money. I don’t think we started off with a budget; it just went on. Sometimes when you put prices on it you realise how foolish you were but we fell in love with things. It was a labour of love and we knew one day it would be completed.”